Playing with fire

Tales of weird and supernatural suspense from Arthur Conan Doyle, the author best known for the creation of the illustrious detective Sherlock Holmes. The next addition to the Hardback Classics series, with previous titles collecting the works of Sheridan le Fanu, Margaret Oliphant and M.R. James.The luminous fog drifted slowly off the table and wavered and flickered across the room. There in the farther and darkest corner it gathered and glowed, hardening down into a shining core… Although best known for the stories of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a remarkable number of weird and supernatural tales. Pulling at this thread of his fiction reveals a writer deeply fascinated in matters of the occult, the uncanny and the unexplainable, with his belief in spiritualism later in life only adding to his passion for the unknown. This volume collects Doyle’s most enduring strange stories – ranging from monster encounters and deadly hauntings to dark tales of mesmerism – and also includes a new introduction along with Doyle’s never-before-reprinted essay on his own spiritual experiences, "Stranger than Fiction."